This poem has just appeared in an anthology called Miracle and Clockwork. It’s a selection of poems published during the 20 years of the magazine Other Poetry.   

It’s a peculiarly English poem, concerned as it is with one of our more innocuous national obsessions, tending allotments (flower & vegetable plantations situated on rented ground.)  The more developed allotments always boast a shed…

THE SHEDS

Sheds: haunches nestled into
banked earth.  Cow parsley, ragwort,
bedding high sides.  Blunt faces
nose-ringed with hanging padlocks.

Inside, a stook of exhausted
spades, a knackered
wheelbarrow, face-down,
a crippled bike, kept for spares.

Here, where the sheds are,
clocks run slow.  One man,
slouched in a doorway,
hand-rolls a cigarette.

Another taps out a briar
onto a windowsill
and then repacks the bowl.
Rapt, he stares across the match flame.

Kids roll and scatter,
break like high-tide
at the allotment's edge.
They watch, uncomprehending,

the semaphore of sweet-peas,
rocking, bean-rows, carrot-tops;
the closed and secret faces
of the sheds.

The sun goes down
behind the recreation ground,
Breaking ranks, shadow-wrapped,
the houses sidle in.